Cilician

Hi Everyone, Azat let me know about this thread, and I think it is a great idea. I am willing to help out, as long as I feel the time requirements are manageable. So let your brainstorming lead to a few concrete ideas and I can then give some of thoughts on the ideas, and take it from there... Best

I agree too, I think that many of the reviews were embarassingly (to their writers) ignorant. I think that a big reason that this movie did not get great reviews across the board is precisely because the Armenian Genocide is so obscure today, unlike the Holocaust. If you understand what happened during the genocide, and you understand who Gorky was, then the movie is not at all confusing or hard to follow. So for example a movie about Ann Frank would start off with a huge advantage. There is no need to explain the holocaust, or Ann Frank, or holocaust denial or assimilation/life in America so many years later. That gives anything having to do with the holocaust a major advantage, but as was said, only makes Egoyan's feat much more impressive. People go in with too many preconceptions about what the movie is about and too little background. One Armenian wrote on imdb.com that he thought it was a "horrible documentary". Who the hell told him it was a documentary??!?! Eh, anyway, one day the very easy to grasp 40 days of Musa Dagh will be made in the style of Braveheart for all the simple minded folks who will finally be happy. :-)

Oftentimes it's best to agree to disagree. :-)

quote:Originally posted by MJ: quote:Originally posted by Raffi Kojian:Sip, Ok you got me, he knows ALL the relevant foreign policy facts! :-) (tough crowd I tell ya!) I was talking about his summary of what US foreign policy has done over the past few decades when I said he knows the facts... Better? :-) So what has it done?As I said, there is a link with this info, but I will paste it here. If you follow the link you can get more info on many of them.http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/library...erful/index.php ___________________ 1953: U.S. overthrows Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran. U.S. installs Shah as dictator. 1954: U.S. overthrows democratically-elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed. 1963: U.S. backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem. 1963-1975: American military kills 4 million civilians in Southeast Asia. September 11, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile. Democratically elected president Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered. 1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns killed. 1980's: U.S. trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion. 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds "contras". 30,000 Nicaraguans die. 1982: U.S. provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians. 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to help them kill Iraqis. 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. U.S. invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from U.S. 1991: U.S. enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait. 1998: Clinton bombs "weapons factory" in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making aspirin. 1991 to present: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. U.N. estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions. 2000-01: U.S. gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in "aid". September 11, 2001: Osama Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people. ___________________________ Anyway, this is my last post on the topic... or else it can go on forever.

quote:Originally posted by MJ: quote:Originally posted by Raffi Kojian: quote:Originally posted by Sip: quote:Originally posted by vava:1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works! He is very wrong in this. I think he should step out of his comfy beverly hills home and go and talk to some real Americans. Right or wrong, the fact is that more than 70% of the Americans do support this war.Now now, lets not play spin doctor. He says very clearly that nobody is GUNG-HO, he does not say that nobody supports it. Also, I find it telling that most of the polls regarding Iraq tend to ask whether people support the removal of Saddam, a very different question than whether they support the war. Media spin doctoring... Dear Raffi, But which developed nation wants war? Why should one try to prove here that Americans, including the governement, want war? No one wants it. But if war is forced upon America, no one should have doubts on her willingness to win it. That is a very flagrant use of the phrase "war is forced on America". Nothing was forced, and most Americans and the planet disagreed, many quite strongly and vocally with even a just cause for this war. I have said it before and I will say it again. Hate Saddam? Then kill/murder him, not thousands of Iraqis (and some Americans and Brits to boot). Willing to spend good money on killing Saddam? Offer 1 BILLION dollars for his head on a platter, or even 5 billion, but NOT $75 billion minimum we are looking at. An old fashioned "Wanted, Dead or Alive, Saddam Hussein, Bush's mortal enemy, $5,000,000,000 reward" :-) AND THEN, to be FAIR, and gain a TINY bit of credibility, offer the same reward for Ariel Sharon! Hmph. Anyone who can support this war without strongly supporting a war on Israel on the very same grounds is a hypocrite if you ask me.

quote:Originally posted by Sip: quote:Originally posted by vava:1. There is virtually NO ONE in America (talk radio nutters and Fox News aside) who is gung-ho to go to war. Trust me on this one. Walk out of the White House and on to any street in America and try to find five people who are PASSIONATE about wanting to kill Iraqis. YOU WON'T FIND THEM! Why? 'Cause NO Iraqis have ever come here and killed any of us! No Iraqi has even threatened to do that. You see, this is how we average Americans think: If a certain so-and-so is not perceived as a threat to our lives, then, believe it or not, we don't want to kill him! Funny how that works! He is very wrong in this. I think he should step out of his comfy beverly hills home and go and talk to some real Americans. Right or wrong, the fact is that more than 70% of the Americans do support this war.Now now, lets not play spin doctor. He says very clearly that nobody is GUNG-HO, he does not say that nobody supports it. Also, I find it telling that most of the polls regarding Iraq tend to ask whether people support the removal of Saddam, a very different question than whether they support the war. Media spin doctoring...

Sip, Ok you got me, he knows ALL the relevant foreign policy facts! :-) (tough crowd I tell ya!) I was talking about his summary of what US foreign policy has done over the past few decades when I said he knows the facts... I did not mean it as a blanket statement about the guy, and anything not covered on that page does not count. Better? :-)

quote:Originally posted by Sip:I just can't stand for people who know nothing about anything standing up in such a place and claim to know exactly what's going on. Protest if you must ... but everything has a time and a place ... and that was neither the time nor the palce. Go to www.michaelmoore.com to see if he knows what he is talking about. He knows ALL the facts (see specifically http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com/library...rful/index.php) and I am sorry but if you believe the war is wrong you have a duty and obligation to say so every forum you are given.

I am keeping "bak" for the same reasons, but I am sticking to the more traditional vegan rules (no meat, dairy or honey :-) I have done what I call bak light in the past, where I only don't eat meat, but everything else including bullion is OK. It is much easier and I prefer it, but this year it is the strict rules for me. I also used to say it is 40 days, but unless I am mistaken, it is much longer than that... According to my online Armenian Church Calendar at: http://www.calendar.am/calendar.pl?calendar=church Lent starts on March 3 this year and goes through April 20. Either I am doing it for too long, or lent is actually 48 days, which is almost 25% more than 40 days... someone clear thus up here!

Well I never said the movie is not worth seeing, it was thought provoking and entertaining for sure. I just thought it feel flat as a serious documentary and its approach/stats needed to be presented a lot more carefully. The exploration of media's hyping fear constantly is a topic that needs to be covered, but it is a bit obvious to me. The question is who are these people that can't turn off the TV when they see "STORM WATCH 2003" or "GANGSTER SHOOTOUT NON-STOP LIVE COVERAGE" or anything else overdramatized and ridiculous? For years I have wondered how a plane crash is still news... by that standard, every single car crash should news worthy too. Certainly more people die from car crashes. Anyway, whatever, the media here just sucks and I don't know if it causes America's mental disintegration or is caused by America's mental disintegration but if I was king for a day...

I think all Armenian celebrities should given a free trip to Armenia like that. There is good publicity surrounding it, and in the end other fringe benefits could emerge. Influences on their work, associations, desire to return, desire to help, etc, etc. It is just a worthwhile investment.

I watched this movie a few weeks ago and was a bit disappointed. I think that he glossed over a lot of important statistic which made them unfair, did his usual hijacking of people who had no blame, etc. Let me explain. (WARNING: The remainder of this text may "spoil" the movie for you if you plan to watch it and are one of those people who can't know anything about a movie before watching it!) When he says that Canada does not have nearly as much violet crime, he does not mention that America has over 10x as many people. Or when he mentions numbers of homocides in Australia he does not mention that they have 15x less people. When he mentions England which again has much fewer people, he does not mention that gun ownership is severly limited there, so that even police do not carry them. The only way to be fair here is to mention statistics per capita or per thousand residents. To simply throw out numbers like that and leave it to the audience to make sense of it is extremely dishonest to me. As for his targets in the movie, the attack of K-mart was very unfair. Yes, the bullets were bought there, but how is that K-marts fault? Taking handicapped victims to their headquarters was cheap, unless he went and did it to every bullet retailer in Colorado or nationwide. The honest thing to do would have been to lobby for gun restrictions if that is your true goal. Anyways, these sorts of issues prevented me from enjoying the movie as much as I could have.

Thanks exactly it Hayemyes, this site gives YOU (meaning anybody and everybody) the ability to add any event you know of. So YOU should add those events you know of that are not on there yet. Nobody is in charge of adding events, it is on a voluntary basis, so if one organization is better at adding their events, that will make their events more successful. It is still a relatively new site, only 2 months old, but the LA, San Francisco, and Yerevan Calendars are quite active... other calendars are a bit more scattered, but I think it is only a matter of time before all of the communities and organizers discover this resource and utilize it. As I said, it is an open calendar and therefore completely unbiased!

Thanks Ruben, I may do a complete site redesign, but I will not add any links back to the front page until I have a much better internet connection! :-)

Hi folks, I just wanted to let you know about a new website I launched in September which has a seperate Calendar of Events for *every* single Armenian community in the world. It is a really nice site to navigate, people can add their own new events, view by day, week, month, etc. Anyway, feel free to check it out, add your events (or all the events going on in your community) and please pass on the word. With a single clearinghouse for Armenian events our events themselves will become more successful (since more people will know where to find out about them) and we will have a complete choice of what is going on to choose from. Hope you all like it as much as I do, n_w$$h www.cilicia.com www.calendar.am

Vay vay vay, what a plague that was that hit me. Thanks for your support guys. I never had to deal with that level of viciousness on such a scale before on my site, but as a couple of you have noticed, I think I have put in some serious safeguards which will prevent anything like it in the future... I really had a hard time even believing these folks were Armenians who found it necessary to launch a jihad on this issue. I would love to meet these maniacs face to face, see what they really have to say for themselves. (Yes I am a glutton for punishment!) Anyway, antsadz 'la. I knew my opinion of them is mainstream, but nonetheless it was good to know y'all agree. Glad to hear you like me site as well. ;-) Hajogh, n_w$$h www.cilicia.com